Despite being hailed as a Christ-like savior when he was elected, a record number of Americans have lost faith in Barack Obama, with just 17 per cent believing the his administration is leading the nation in the right direction, figures that illustrate howObama’s handling of the debt crisis has virtually assured his 2012 election defeat, unless the President can exploit a terrorattack on U.S. soil to regain popular support.

“Just 17% of Likely U.S. Voters now say the country is heading in the right direction. That finding is the lowest measured since Barack Obama took office,”reports Rasmussen.

Obama has also beaten his all time high for the number of Americans who think the country is on the wrong track, with 75 per cent, or three quarters of all Americans, losing faith in his administration’s policies.

Wrangling over the debt crisis has clearly turned many more Americans against Obama. In the previous week’s poll, before the debt story rose to the center of public attention, the number of Americans who thought the country was heading in the right direction stood at 21 per cent. The figure has declined by 8 per cent in just the last two weeks alone.

Unsurprisingly, the only group that retains a slim majority of people confident in the nation’s current course are from the “political class,” which is precisely whom most Americans would blame for the country’s downfall in recent years.

As John Pilger warned leftists right at the start of Obama’s term in office, the presidency of Barack Obama was nothing more than a corporate marketing creation designed to quell building resentment after the Bush era. It has taken two and a half years for most liberals to realize that fact. The poll shows that 58 per cent of Democrats believe the country is heading in the wrong direction.

“Remember, President Clinton reconnected through Oklahoma, right?” said Penn. “And the president right now seems removed. It wasn’t until that speech [after the bombing] that [Clinton] really clicked with the American public. Obama needs a similar defining moment.”

“The bottom line here is that Americans don’t believe in President Obama’s leadership,” said Shapiro, adding, “He has to find some way between now and November of demonstrating that he is a leader who can command confidence and, short of a 9/11 event or an Oklahoma City bombing, I can’t think of how he could do that.”